The Polish aircrash is a tragedy not a disaster

Donald Tusk, the current prime minister, has made friends with Germany and pursued a more subtle, emollient approach to Moscow

A Polish leader killed in an air crash while in the middle of a row with Moscow over the wartime massacre of Katyn has disturbing echoes of the past. Hopefully, this time good will come out of tragedy. Yesterday President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria were among the 97 dead, including the army and banking chiefs, after his plane crashed in thick fog over western Russia while travelling to a commemmoration of the slaughter of Polish officers by Stalin’s secret police, one of the Soviet dictator’s most infamous crimes. Mr Kaczynski was angry that Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, still refused to accept Russia’s guilt.

It was 68 years ago that General Wladyslaw Sikorski, prime minister of the Polish government in exile, also died in a plane crash. His death produced wild conspiracy theories, even that Winston Churchill had connived with the Russians to have him killed. Although